China's Internet regulator has dismissed rumors that Microsoft's Outlook email service was hacked by Chinese authorities as slander by "foreign anti-China forces," the Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday.

"The Chinese government safeguards Internet security and opposes any form of cyber attacks. We will investigate and crack down on Internet attacks in China or against the Chinese network in accordance with the law," Jiang Jun, a spokesperson at China's Cyberspace Administration, said on Thursday.

The GreatFire.org said on Monday that people using e-mail clients like Outlook, Mozilla's Thunderbird and apps on their phone with the SMTP and IMAP e-mail protocols, which are used to send and receive messages, suffered attacks on Saturday, Reuters reported on Monday.

Jiang said GreatFire.org is an anti-China website set up by an overseas anti-China organization, which has long made groundless charges against China. This attack is aimed at deliberately provoking public discontent and criticizing China's cyberspace regulations after the authorities shut down some illegal websites, website columns, and public WeChat accounts, he said.

The hack was launched by a "man-in-the-middle," who simulated Outlook.com to send a notice to verify the identities of a few e-mail users. Once the users clicked "continue," their e-mails were stolen by the hackers, Xinhua reported.

Since the attack lasted less than an hour, few Chinese e-mail users were affected, Xinhua added.

Global Times